I don’t know if many of our readers have noticed this or not, but a while back we started posting local gas prices in the lower left hand corner of the front page of the newspaper.

We know that our readers are interested in the local price of gas and also interested in stretching their dollar, so we thought that as a service to our readers, we’d add a quick and easy way for them to see who has the best price locally.

So each Tuesday morning, a person with our staff phones each of the twelve gas stations in Karnes County with a simple question, "How much is your gas?"

Prices are written down, it goes in the paper – pretty simple, right?

Well, you’d think so, but in actuality there is one local gas station that refuses to give us the price of their gas over the phone.

That’s right.

They refuse to give us the price of their gas over the phone.

For us, it’s incredibly frustrating and more than a little bit baffling.

If someone called here on the phone and asked, "How much does it cost to subscribe to your newspaper?" Never, in a million years could I imagine telling that person, "I’m sorry, I can’t give out that information over the phone."

Or another person might call and say, "I’d really like to place a full page ad in your newspaper. Can you tell me how much that will cost?"

"Sorry, I can’t tell you that. You’ll have to drive over here for that information."

Or, "Can you tell me where your office is located?"

"Can’t tell you that, but if you drive over here you can see our address printed on a giant sign on the front of our building."

I can almost understand it from the point of view of a gas station that has the highest prices in the county. This kind of business probably wouldn’t want their customers to know that they can get their gas much cheaper just down the street.

But this station isn’t usually the most expensive, or the cheapest. They are usually somewhere in the middle.

Another thing about this is very peculiar.

You see, we’ve been doing it for a while now.

They know very well that while they can stop us from getting the price on the phone they can’t stop us from getting into our car and driving the eight blocks to look up at the giant sign with the price of gas on it, and write it down.

And that’s just what we’ve been doing.

It’s like some crazy game. We call them up, they tell us they can’t give us the price, we drive over there and write it down and put it in the newspaper.

Week after week after week.

That’s the really frustrating part.

They know we’re going to put it in the paper anyway. We’ve done it every week for months now, but still, week after week after week, they refuse to give us the price over the phone.

Perhaps they think that by forcing us to drive a few blocks it will make us use more gas that they can sell to us. Maybe they think that while we’re there to make a note of the current gas price we’ll stop and fill up or go inside and buy some other items.

They would be very wrong about that.

We used to spend a considerable amount of money on gas at this particular station, but since they’ve been withholding this "top secret" information out of… out of… spite? Well, we don’t buy much gas there anymore.

In business, being friendly and neighborly promotes good will and good will is good for business.

Bad will, on the other hand, can be very bad for business.

The fact that this store forces us to waste valuable time gathering information that should be open and easily accessible to anyone who inquires makes us very reluctant to do business with them.

You’d think I’d get used to it, but every week when it happens it just makes me want to scream.

It’s such a fundamental part of business – giving out this kind of information on the phone.

Can you imagine calling a pizza place to ask how much a large pepperoni pizza costs and being told, "I can’t give out that kind of information on the phone."

Can you imagine calling any store that sells anything and asking how much an item costs and being told, "I can’t give you that information."

That can’t be good for business, can it?

We won’t be thwarted though.

Until they take down the giant signs displaying their current price of gas, we’ll be there every Tuesday morning with pen and paper.